The Influence And Mechanism Of High Performance Work System On Employees’ Psychological Contract Breach

High performance work system(HPWS) describing “a system of best HR practices designed to enhance employees’ skills, commitment and productivity in such a way that employees become a source of sustainable competitive advantage” is acknowledged to be the core content of strategic human resource management(SHRM) research. Over the past two decades, a substantial body of research has investigated the effects of HPWS on firm performance, employee attitudes and behavior. At the same time, however, prior research has primarily focused on managerial reports of the implementation of HPWS at organizational level, ignoring the role of employees’ actual experiences with HPWS. Given the fact that employees are the actual receiver and practitioners of HR practices, expanding our knowledge of employees’ actual experiences with HPWS is critical because only when HPWS is accurately understood by employees, can it operate to elicit high employees’ affective commitment and greater discretionary effort, which in turn lead to high firm performance. However, the role of employees’ actual experiences with HPWS has seldom been examined explicitly as a mediator between managerial reporting of HPWS and employees’ psychological contract breach; further relevant empirical research is of paucity.The current study contributed to the literature in three ways by means of paired sample T test and hierarchical linear modeling. First, given that there may be a disconnection between what managers say they do as formal practices of HPWS and what employees’ actual experiences; in this study we examined the difference and relationship between management and employee perspectives of HPWS. Second, we integrated content and process paradigm of HRM to examine the influence of HPWS from both management and employee perspectives on individual psychological contract breach and to understand the psychological process through which the influence materialized. Third, drawing on social information process theory and signal theory proposed by Bowen and Ostroff(2004), we examine the moderating role of interactional justice climate in the relationship between management and employee perspectives of HPWSData collected form 36 human resource management supervisors and 234 employees of 36 enterprises in Beijing, Jinan and Qingdao city etc revealed 4 salient findings. First, there were significant differences between management and employee perspectives of HPWS, there were also significant differences in such double perspectives of HPWS among different HPWS dimensions. Second, the management perspective of HPWS was positively related to the employees’ perception of HPWS, and negatively associated with employees’ psychological contract breach. Third, employees’ perception of HPWS fully mediated the influence of HPWS implemented by managers on employees’ psychological contract breach. Fourth, interactional justice climate not only moderated the relationship between management and employee perspectives of HPWS such that the relationship was stronger when the interpersonal justice climate was high rather than low, but also moderated the mediating role of employees’ perspective of HPWS in the third step above.